In connection with surgery for a number of diseases in the gastro-intestinal tract, one of the consequences in many cases is that the patient is left with an abdominal stoma, such as a colostomy, an ileostomy or a urostomy in the abdominal wall for the discharge of visceral contents. The discharge of visceral contents cannot be regulated at will. For that purpose, the user will have to rely on an appliance to collect the material emerging from such opening in a bag, which is later emptied and/or discarded at a suitable time.
An ostomy appliance may be in the form of a one-piece appliance for which a collecting bag for human body wastes is permanently, or fixedly, secured to an adhesive base plate for attachment to the human skin. Alternatively, the ostomy appliance may be a two-piece appliance comprising a base plate and a collecting bag which may be coupled to and un-coupled from each other through a coupling means. This has the effect that the base plate does not need to be separated from the skin of the user as often as exchange of the collecting bag requires. The base plate may need only to be changed every third or fourth day depending on the user, whereas the collecting bag may be changed more than once per day. Typically, it is desirable to need as few exchanges of the base plate as possible in order to reduce the risk of skin complications.
One of the main concerns of ostomates using ostomy appliances having an adhesive base plate for attachment to the skin surrounding a stoma, and where a collecting bag is attached to the base plate for collecting stoma output, is leakage or even complete detachment of the ostomy appliance.
Numerous attempts have been made to solve this problem and even though some attempts have been partly successful, still there exist no products that completely solve this problem.
One reason why this is so difficult to solve is the fact that stomas and peoples anatomy are very different. Different considerations need to be made for thin people than for larger people, for different skin types, for placement of the stoma which may vary a lot from person to person, for scar tissue surrounding the stoma, local irregular skin topography, e.g. a hernia, and more—and in particular combinations of all of the above.
Another reason may be the way the adhesive wafer is applied to the skin surrounding the stoma. If the wafer is not sufficiently fixed to the skin due to carelessness or inattentive application, leaks may occur. The adhesive used for ostomy appliances are typically pressure sensitive adhesives, meaning that application of pressure to the adhesive enhances the adhesive tack of the adhesive, thus it attaches better to the skin. In several cases, ostomy bag users do not apply pressure enough to the adhesive base plate of the bag sufficiently to maintain the adhesive capabilities as well as they may neglect to apply pressure over the entire wafer, due to carelessness or reduced dexterity of the user's hands. This may cause leakage from the stoma.
This problem has been tried solved by using a stronger adhesive, but this may give rise to other problems, as this is more aggressive to the skin and more difficult to remove from the skin. Furthermore, a stronger adhesive may still not be enough, it is equally important that the wafer is mounted sufficiently.
Thus, there is a need to further develop and find improvements in order to solve this problem. In other words, there exists a need to monitor that the ostomy wafer is correctly applied to the user.